Whats wrong with wearing a bullseye?

On the news today there was an article about racial profiling and why it is wrong. Well let me tell you, if I find a half eaten chicken in my henhouse I am not going to question our budgie, I'm going looking for the dog. Now I don't see anything wrong by going looking for the dog because I know there's a higher level of probably he's the one doing the Colonel Saunders with an apron impersonation than the chickens first cousin budgie Bob.

And sorry, but if I'm getting on an airplane I'm going to check out anyone speaking Arabic and carrying a copy of the Koran clutched to his chest a little bit closer than the Granny settling in across the aisle. And you know what, I think thats reasonable. I don't think we should be applying comprehensive generalities to identifiable groups of people, but what the hell, lets use some common sense and discrimination in looking for suspects.



But I can appreciate it when someone feels they are being discriminated against because of their colour or nationality and I know it can do damage, but on the other hand some people revel in perceived slights and persecutions, they can use it as the "big excuse" for every failure in their fucked up lives. Its a great way to put the blame on society. I think the guy who just killed those 4 mounties fit right in there.

My dear old grandmother, who was an amazing woman, as an academic, musician and person once gave me some advice. I remember her saying to me "Jim you have to understand, the French are unable to govern themselves", now thats quite a statement and if I took it at face value I'd have quite a perception of the French. She told me as well, "never turn your back on a Russian, don't trust the Dutch, and the Germans like everything in order." It was said with the confident air of "everyone knows these things". She also passed words of wisdom on most other Europeans but I can't seem to recall them. But you know I have found that its a better policy to take people as you find them, the unfortunate is that some groups are found exactly as they are generally described.

But no less a person than James A. Michener once wrote "the Spanish are a strange people, they are the only race where a mans mistress is probably uglier than his wife". It must have been from an obscure essay as I don't recall any womens lib movement to string him up, and it was either accepted as fact in Spain or unreported because he visited the country many times and left with his testicles intact on each occaision. Maybe he's right maybe he's wrong.

But I think in the wave of political correctness the biggest discrimination I see is the reverse profiling done when someone makes what is a statement based on their observations, but have it twisted to become a racially derogative statement that was made and designed to hurt.

I grew up in Saskatchewan and in an area where there was a huge native population, now you can make a lot of general statements about Indians that would get you into hot water in the racial profiling arena. These would probably involve drink, work, promiscuity and even if you had observed behaviour over a long period of time you'de be setting of a bomb under your chair if you made these observations public.

One of the interesting passtimes we used do in the summer was go into Battleford about 10 o'clock on Saturday night to watch the Indians get arrested. And why were they getting arrested you ask, well because they get out of order when they drink. You could count on it, there'd be fights and fornication and guys pissing against your car, trust me the Indians wouldn't let you down. But I think it would be best nowadays for you to say "think I'll go into town and see if anythings happening"

Thats about as positive a statement as "the French can't govern themselves", now I don't know about the French, but I do know about Indians and know lots of them, they definitely get out of order when they get drunk, great people when they're sober but they go "Indian" when they're drunk, whoops there I go again. And if they want me to think differently it would be easy behave differently, but maybe thats to simple, but Michael was right when he said " if you want to be thin, stop fucking eating".

I also got some profiling from my Grandfathers, my grandfather MacKenzie once told me "Jimmy, never trust a Campbell and my grandfather Kinnee came out with "those MacKenzies, always looking around to see who they can do next."

I suppose that every statement I have made or retold was based on some personal experiences or observations, but in todays climate anything you say about the characteristics of any identified group of people is seen to be racist and once said you can't defend it. I'd say its the worst kind of discrimination and cuts right to the heart of freedom of speech. Even if its based on fact. So now we can't say the Japanese are short, that black people don't excel at swimming, that the Scotch are thrifty, the Irish have trouble with alcohol, that South Sea Islanders are laid back, that Jehovah Witnesses are intense, satanists evil, and lawyers - well if you make a general statement about them they'll take you to court. Which incidentally a lawyer in new York recently did to a man who was telling lawyer jokes outside the courtroom. So maybe its best to never say anything about anybody.

Theres a big difference about saying something for the expressed purpose to hurt somone and making a statement based on an interpretation of observations and facts. Now if you want to explore an example in detail look up the essay written by University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill in which he uses the phrase "little Eichmanns" when referring to some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks on The World Trade Centres. Don't get me wrong I am not going to endorse what he said, but after reading the essay I could understand why he reasoned his way to including that statement. But as a result he will probably be tarred and feathered, lose his tenure, have his reputation left in tatters for simply making a statement that could be backed up by his observations and reasoning. When really all he was guilty of was, (and my kids all know whats coming next) "poor judgement"

My wife has often said that I'm just like my family and when she says it you can bet its not reflecting on our good looks, honesty, wisdom or charity but I guess its how she sees me. I might not agree with it but theres no law I'm aware of that states we all have to think alike.

But then I have noticed sometimes when I am looking in the mirror its my father and grandfather looking back.

Heres what a golden egg looks like

So I was pretty surprised when I determined what the allowable profit number for the ferry service was. But once I understood that, it made a few other things clear, principally why there had never seemed to be much of a marketing effort. Presumably money spent on marketing would have been outside of the allowable expenditures defined in the operating agreement and more passengers was of no concequence.

So how in heck did the make their money. I remember Tim Banks one time telling me how the system worked and that the way to make money from Government was not a big fat appointment to the Senate. Thats for small fry, and besides you might actually have to do some work for it. The way to make real money was to lease or rent something to government. I was let in on this little gem when the DVA building was being built in Charlottetown. I hope the facts are straight but here is how the story was told to me.

When DVA was going to move to Charlottetown there was no place for them to go so here was how the big payoff worked. About 20 Liberal supporters were rounded up, I believe they were all from Toronto and a deal was put together. It went something like this. The Bank of Montreal loaned each of them $50,000.00, that makes 1 million. Then on the strength of a long term lease a mortgage was put in place and the building was constructed. Now a 20 year lease to the Federal government is something pretty solid to take to the Bank as security for a loan and a mortgage. So for the sake of illustration lets say the mortgage amount was 9 million dollars. We now have the 10 million dollars to build the thing. But the money has to be paid back ( to simplify things lets forget about interest) So we need three things
1. A repayment plan for the $1,000.000.00 over 5 years.
2. A repayment plan for the 9 million over the 20 years
3. A lease agreement where governmnet pays the developer a yearly fee for the building.

So lets make sure that the lease terms include at least $200,000.00 per year to cover the short term loans, and that clears those in 5 years. Then we need $450.000.00 per year for 20 years to clear the mortgage. But isn't any investor entitled to a profit, well of course they are and here is where it gets sweet. How much profit. Well let me tell you at the end of the day some "friends are going to be well rewarded" and the beauty of it is that no one has to do anything for it. Management fees are built in to costs, you can't lose and when the 20 years are up and the building is paid for does anyone think the lease fees are going down, fat chance. Twenty guys spend their days on the golf course and the beach for life. Kind of makes a guy want to go out an take out a party membership doesn't it. We've seen the same thing in various forms here on the Island. Think about it, remember when Government paid millions for Elmer Lawtons warehouse, and thats all they got. Then we had Dundarave, and Tim got his in there to, although that went through a tendering process, and the big payoff came when Government put a halt to the condominium side of the project and Tim held them up for ransom and now receives, what is it 1.7 million per year for the Greenwich interprative centre, good for him. And to put the lease rental game in perspective I read a report from public works a few years ago where Government was paying for a million or so square feet of office space that was empty. Hmm starting to see how it works.

So anyway if you want to verify a few things there is lots of public documents that point you in the right direction concerning the ferry. Although ownership has changed hands now, at the time of the fixed link debate and you did some here are the answers you would have probably gotten.

A check of International shipping registries will show who owned the ferries that Northumberland used. When you find that only one of the boats was owned by the Federal Government, I bet a few light bulbs will start coming on in your head.

If you check with the Provincial Community Affairs Department you will discover that the same same Corporate name showing in shipping registries happens to be a PEI Company and no its not Northumberland Ferries but how much you want to bet the Board Directors of Northumberland Holdings both are the same.

So here is where the golden egg makes its appearance. Try this scenario on for size.

Northumberland Ferries is granted the first concession. In order to make it work they need a ferry so they found one called the Erie Isle. Now because we already know how the DVA deal worked is it a stretch of the imagination to think this could have been the same. Except it wasn't quite the same because of the concession so here it is, drum roll please.

Northumberland Holdings Ltd. buys the ferry and it costs say, $1000.00 per year to pay for it, so it is then leased it to the Department of Transport for say, $1500.00 per year, then the Feds lease it to Northumberland Ferries for $1.00 per year so they can run the concession. Northumberland ferries is the goose, but Northumberland Holdings is the golden egg. Isn't it sweet in its simplicity, and if you think that Mitch MacLean built that big house down on the waterfront because of his hard work, well think again.

Isn't Amarica wonderful. But I do have to give Mitch MacLean some credit, I don't know how "The Cat" works but from where I sit I am impressed that its there and its making money, I hear that he did put it together. But somone told me once that the old Island expression applies to him better than anyone " he's so mean he won't shit away from home."

There's more than one way to skin a cat

Thers a lot of talk about the ferries these days, I see both Paul MacNeill from the Guardian and the Premier both hinted at the mistake of signing away the constitutional guarantee. I have wondered if there is appeal process.

Anyway, I want to talk about an even more interesting aspect of the ferry service, who makes the money and how much. Read on, because I think you are going to be in for a big surprise.

Have you ever watched the old shell game where the pea is put under a walnut shell and no matter how close you watch you can never figure out what happens, thats what this is all about. So after I looked at the constitutional part of the equation I continued trudging along to figure out, how much money is in this game. Well, the first thing I discovered was that the operator of the service was given what amounted to "the right to operate a concession" thats what they called the service "a concession". Then I found out that the concession came up for renewal on a regular basis. Funny I thought I've never seen a tender notice in the paper maybe they do it a different way.

Exactly, it turns out the different way is that the Department of Transport would sit down with Northumberland Ferries and they would negotiate the terms of the next concession period. This process would produce what was known as the operating agreement. Ah ha I thought I'll get a copy of that and see whats going on. You see that operating agreement is a public document and if a Company wins a Government tender you get to see what a good job those doing procurement for government do, how they look for the best price for the taxpayer blah blah blah.

And seeing as how this particular Government contract never went to tender I was equally interested in seeing what kind of negotiators these birds were. So off went a letter and some phone calls to the Federal Minister of Transportation requesting a copy of the last operating agreement. Well blow the man down sailor, it was no time at all until I got a phone call from the Ministers office. "What do you want the agreement for" the caller asked, well I said aside from the fact that I have a right to see it for curiousities sake I am interested in whats about to happen with the ferry service down here. "I don't think we can give it to you" he went on. Hmmm I thought "we'll see about that" so after a long session I must have done pretty good job of talking because eventually he got the point that I wasn't going away and he agreed to send it.

And sure enough one day a big package arrived and inside was a document that stared with something like "Agreement between the Government of Canada and Northumberland Ferry Corp, it appeared I had struck paydirt. But when I opened it, the first thing I noticed was that every where there was a place to mention a monetary amount it was blacked out. So I phoned the guy "sorry he said but we can't tell you the $ amounts" I didn't argue with him but made a mental note to figure out how to get it.

Well let me tell you it is quite a document and not at all like I thought it would be. I figured that a subsidy amount was agreed to and then the Company would try to operate the ferry in an efficient manner to make some money, you know, things like market the ferry experience, polish up the service on board, make sure the schedule matched the needs of the travelling public, truckers etc. Was I ever naive to try to apply some old fashioned business principles to it and what a lesson, I learned there is an old saying " I have a plan so cunning that if I put a tail on it you could call it a weasel" and I just stumbled upon it.

You see, the way the agreement reads it was impossible for the ferry service to lose money, all they had to do was run the boats back and forth. It didn't matter if the boats only carried one vehicle a trip or if they were full from spring to fall it didn't effect the bottom line. They made exactly the same amount of money. Basically the agreement goes like this, all expenses are added up, fuel, wages, repairs food etc, everything it takes to run a ferry and then from this is subtracted the amount of money they figure is going to taken in from tolls.

Now get this the amount left over is the profit, sounds OK so far, except that the AMOUNT OF THE YEARLY PROFIT is negotiated before any expenses or revenues are determined.

If the expenses go up the amount given to cover them goes up the exact amount to keep the profit the same. The same with revenues if its a good year the extra money goes to Government and again the profit stays the same.

Holy macaroni I thought I wouldn't mind some of this milk. It just seemed like to good a deal for Northumberland Ferries, no risk just show up every few and go through the sham of a negotiation and take the money home. But I still hadn't figured out how much that was so I set out to get the figures and was I in for a shock.

I can't disclose how I came upon a copy of the operating agreement that hadn't been inked out and when I saw the number for the profit it was stunning, not because it was so high but because it was so low. If I remember right, and this figure is close, the total corporate profit before taxes was $185,000.00. Now come on, this is a major Company and by the time you distributed that in a dividend to all the shareholders it just didn't make sense and because I never saw any of them lining up at the soup kitchen there had to be something else. You see so far all I had found was the goose and you can read tomorrow how it was able to lay a big fat golden egg each year.

What happens when a slinky replaces a backbone.

I got a phone call from a friend last night cancelling a meeting of the Board at our Golf Course we were both to attend. He informed me that he had to go to another emergency meeting being held to discuss the subsidy problem of the Northumberland Ferry service between Wood Island and Caribou, Nova Scotia. Now if you want to hear a story about people with no spines when the chips are down read on.

The great debate on PEI about the fixed link took place in 1988, I may err on a few details, numbers etc but you'll get the general drift of how the Northumberland Ferry service fits in.

One of the problems with the fixed link was that if it was built there wouldn't be any one working at Marine Atlantic anymore so there was a lot of roaring going on in the media about what was going to happen to these people. And that's where the focus was, on the service between Borden and Cape Tormentine and that's what caught everyones attention. The bottom line was that there was some kind of a constitutional agreement between the Province and the Federal Government that there would be a Government supported Ferry service for all time. If the fixed link went ahead there wouldn't be a need for the ferry anymore so it was agreed that the guarantee would be replaced by the bridge and those effected would have some kind of formal severance, retraining, etc package negotiated. Sounds like the end of the story, not to likely.

You see there was another ferry service that was started up that ran between Wood Islands and Caribou at the Eastern end of the Island. Now the forming of this service had politics written all over it, in fact the location of the docking facilities was located at Wood islands where the channel is quite shallow rather than few miles east whwre the water is deep because of a political boundary.

Now in order to get equal treatment for this service it was decided that the original agreement with the Government of Canada would have the new service added to it in an effort to guarantee the annual subsidy. So it was added and described as an "adjunct service". Now when I came across this at the time of the debate I thought to myself. Mr. Stewart who was the prime mover and shaker that put this together did a real shrewed bit of maneuvering to secure the long term financial viability of the service (which incidentally he was a major shareholder of). Instead of negotiating an agreement outside of the existing agreement he had it attached to the "service for all time guarantee" as a separate agreement, A hell of a strategy I thought.

But by the time that the fixed link scenario came along Mr. Stewart was long in his grave and lesser fellows were at the controls. Northumberland Ferries had recently gone through a power struggle of sorts and the General Manager John Aspin had lost out in a bid to control the Company to Mitch MacLean by just a hairsbreadth. In fact John thought he had it but one of the shareholders who had promised to support him had a change of heart and he lost out. But don't feel sorry for him because he held a nice sized block of stock which was bought by the winners in the struggle and John went into retirement and the new gang took over.

When I was researching the issue I began to wonder about the constitutional agreement so I went and paid a visit to John to try and get his insight into the situation, and that was when I became aware that John had hired a lawyer and posed a very interesting question to him.

Now here comes some speculation mixed with fact I'll leave to your intuitions to come to your own conclusions. Now to say that John was kindly disposed towards Mitch Maclean was roughly on a par with the liklihood of Hilary Clinton having a chat over a cup of tea with Monica Lewinski.

But John was obviously thinking ahead and maybe he was sitting in his office one day and wondered to himself "now what if somebody built a bridge or a tunnel what would the position of the Northumberland Ferries subsidy be, and incidentally his share values. So he contacted a lawyer and asked him the question, "Joe" he said "if a fixed service came along down at Borden what would the impact of that be on Northumberland's subsidy." Hmm thought Joe good question. Now there was a reason why John went to this particular lawyer, you see this guy was quite brilliant and had written his Masters Thesis on Canadian constitutional law and since this was going to be a constitutional issue John thought " this is my boy".

Now by a quirk of fate Joe turned out to be Joe Ghiz who was practicing with Alan Scales at the time. So Joe set to work and it wasn't long before he cut to the heart of the matter. If a fixed link was built it was reasonable to assume that the federal Government would bring the argument forward that the link met and replaced the conditions of a permanent link to the mainland so the agreement should be declared null and void.

But Joe like any good lawyer said to himself "what about the fate of my client Northumberland Ferries, if the guaranteed subsidy agreement is thrown out." So he pondered the question What about the Northumberland amendment concerning the adjunct service, will it be scrapped or does it form a legal and binding agreement separate from the Borden - Cape Tormentine run.

In effect does the guarantee of a ferry service apply to the addendum to the original agreement, because, if it did then we have a guarantee of a link at Borden and a separate guarantee of a link in the east at Wood Islands. So a legal opinion was delivered that focused on that point. And John knew that if it could be argued and won in a constitutional court it was a separate agreement that it would probably be the only thing that could save Northumberland Ferries in the long term.

I think John was in a position something like this, he hated what had happened with Mitch Maclean, but felt a loyalty towards the Northumberland employees. When I presented him with what I thought could be the answer to the problem he agreed that I was on the right track and then he told me about Joe Ghiz and the work he had done. So I popped the question, did he have a copy of Ghiz's legal opinion and if so could I see it. Now thats when John got uncomfortable, you see if he had a copy would it be ethical to make it available to me, after all it was a confidential document.

"Yes" he said I have a copy, no he said he couldn't show it to me, but felt that if another lawyer were to reseach the question his/her findings would probably bring an interesting turn to the events that were going on.

So thats what it came down to and just to make it clear about the issue I'll spell it out again. If the fixed link went ahead at Borden and the bridge was judged to fill the conditions of the original guarantee then the word fixed link could replace the word ferry. But, what about the addendum concerning the adjunct service, did the fixed link also fulfill the guarantee of service in the East. Does that make it clear, because if it does, then crappola to the ferry service or death by a thousand cuts.

But if it didn't then the guarantee of continued service at Wood Island was guaranteed.

So there we sit, what John had been concerned about was about to take place. It was a high stakes game for the Island because the prospect of a fixed link was widely agreed upon as being an enormous economic boon to the Island. Traffic and tourism would increase, money would flow jobs would be created, wow the land of milk and honey was just around the corner.

And just what could be expected happened, the Minister of Transport decreed that as a condition of the Federal Government's approval the constitutional guarantee of perpetual ferry service would be thrown into the sea of forgetfullness because the link now met the conditions.

Now my own personal opinion is that, lawyers on the Federal side had looked deep into the agreement as it had been amended and were uncomfortable with what they found about the adjunct agreement. Incidentally this is a public document and anyone interested enough can get a copy and you can form your own opinion.

But I thought old Dave Stewart has outfoxed them, and by having the agreement apply to the eastern end of the Island as a separate guarantee there was nothing to worry about.

But as time passed it became clear to me that someone was dropping the ball, why wasn't Northumberland Ferries waving its agreement and why was there a crescendo of silence from the politicians from Kings County. Then it struck me, these fucking guys haven't caught on. So I thought Ill let them in on a little secret. I made a few phone calls and set up meetings with the Kings County Champions, the guys elected to take care of business for us.

Well was I in for a shock, it quickly became obvious that Lawrence MacAulay and his aids wanted no part of this. Now if you knew Lawrence back then you knew that he would no more get caught up in trying explain or defend a complex position than jump in front of a truck. Plus I don't think Lawrence could see past the end of the week. So no luck there.

But the Provincial representatives would surely see the light, so armed with my story I headed off to give them a way to save the day, was I in for a surprise. The reaction was approximately the same if I would have come bearing shit on a stick. The Liberal party was in a period of transition with Joe bolting to the safety of a position as Dean of Law at Dalhousie and every Liberal politician in the Province except Peter Doucette trying to keep in the good graces of Katherine the Klutz and Katie sure as hell wasn't going to put the golden goose at risk by putting up a fight for little old Eastern PEI and Mitch Macleans navy. And she would surely have looked with disfavour on anybody in the caucus trying to upset her little applecart.

So I got told to back off and not meddle with big boys business and the next thing you know the dirty deed was done. End of story, except its not the end quite yet, but its coming. The service got cut back, remember the thousand cuts, well here it is 2005 and the game is still going on, little by little. From 4 boats to 2, and stay tuned cause next theres just going to be one. just to 1 and with a shortened season. And wait until 2010 when the next agreement comes due, get ready for June to September with reduced sailings and by about 2015 the coffin will just about be ready to sent to the bottom of Davey Jones locker.

Now understanding that, doesn't it piss you off that it went down without so much as a peep. Imagine what would have happened if one or all of our Liberal members from Kings County had stood up and been counted, but all they could think about was there own skins. Its funny how your judgement can be blurred when all you can think about is your own interests. There used to be a saying on NBC Wonderful World of Sports " snatching defeat from the jaws of victory". After all these birds were toasted anyway and Pat Binns was warming up the griddle.

Now boys and girls its time to turn out the lights and go to sleep and I'll tell you another bedtime story tomorrow.